For centuries the Turin Shroud was believed to be Christ's authentic burial cloth,miraculously imprinted with his image--but in 1988 carbon dating revealed it is a medieval- or Renaissance-era forgery. However, authors Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince realized that the 1988 discovery prompted even more questions:

The image seems to be a photograph--so could the Turin Shroud actually be the world's first photograph?

If the face of the man on the Shroud is not Jesus', whose is it...

For centuries the Turin Shroud was believed to be Christ's authentic burial cloth,miraculously imprinted with his image--but in 1988 carbon dating revealed it is a medieval- or Renaissance-era forgery. However, authors Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince realized that the 1988 discovery prompted even more questions:

The image seems to be a photograph--so could the Turin Shroud actually be the world's first photograph?

If the face of the man on the Shroud is not Jesus', whose is it?

Who had the sheer audacity to create what would become an infamous relic of Christianity, faking even Christ's holy, redemptive blood?

Whoever did this was not only a genius but also a heretic...

After more than a decade of research, Pickuett and Prince have accumulated evidence that shows not only was the forger of the Turin Shroud none other than Leonardo da Vinci but also that he used his own face for that of Christ. The Turin Shroud is, among other things, a five-hundred-year-old photograph of Leonardo da Vinci. Could Christianity's greatest relic in fact be an attempt to undermine the religion itself?

Illustrations

Introduction: IRONY AND INSPIRATION

1 MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

2 THE VERDICT OF HISTORY

3 THEORIES

4 CORRESPONDENTS

5 "FAUST'S ITALIAN BROTHER"

6 THE SHROUD CONSPIRACY

7 GETTING THE MEASURE OF SHROUDMAN

8 POSITIVE DEVELOPMENTS

9 LEONARDO'S LAST TESTAMENT

Epilogue: IN HIs OWN IMAGE

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Index